Movie, 1944 A good looking, well-paced hodgepodge of a film. Ostensibly, this is a mystery with a supernatural twist, although there’s plenty of romance, dashes of family saga, comedy and a few odd scenes, which don’t seem to add much to the plot. The film ploughs in a huge chunk of propaganda in at the end, just for good measure. For all this, the positive … Continue reading ‘The Halfway House,’ directed by Basil Dearden
Novel, 1944 Golden Age whodunnit set around a play being put on in Oxford and featuring the eccentric Don and amateur sleuth, Gervase Fen. As a whole, this book unwinds rather gently, curiosities piqued as chapters conclude less with dramatic flourishes than an air of gentle expectation. The details of backstage bickering, organists and academia are all well done and the writing is witty and … Continue reading “The Case of the Gilded Fly”, by Edmund Crispin
Movie, 1944 Grisly psychological study of a husband’s mental greed and cruelty, with enough melodrama to send anyone into a spin. The overall look and feel of the film are both superb, although the build up and back story feel laboured and unnecessary, with an immediate degree of malice in the husband instantly decoupling some of the narrative tension. Still, some of the photography is … Continue reading "Gaslight", directed by George Cukor
Movie, 1944 Movie dramatisation of Eric Ambler’s Epitaph for a Spy, whose departures from the book rather let it down. A young James Mason is good value, but a little switched on and glamorous as the bungling ‘hero’ Vadassy and the amateurish antics in the novel, which give it its tension, are rather smoothed out. Still, there’s a dreamy interplay and set and some great … Continue reading "Hotel Reserve", directed by Lance Comfort, Mutz Greenbaum and Victor Hanbury
Movie, 1944 Cracking film noir, with all the wise cracking, brooding shadows and compromised characters you could ask for. While this isn’t quite up to the standard of Bogart’s Marlowe, this is an entertaining film all the same and moves along at a decent pace. The character of Moose Malloy brings a measure of humour with the cruelty and brutality, while the action scenes are … Continue reading "Murder My Sweet", directed by Edward Dmytryk
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